


More than Just Surviving

by Canaan



Series: How It Could Have Happened [4]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Smut, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-06
Updated: 2011-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-14 11:26:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He didn't know if he could turn the dream, but he could drive it away with his body."</p>
            </blockquote>





	More than Just Surviving

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to my BR aibhinn for saving my life (or at least my dignity) on a narrative tense issue.
> 
> Disclaimer: They not mine, I'm just haunted by them.

The Doctor's elbow in his ribs woke Jack. It wasn't much of a blow, but he was half-awake and automatically surveying his surroundings before he consciously realized he was still on the TARDIS, in the bed that used to be his and which now held all three of them, more often than not. The Doctor didn't sleep every night, and didn't sleep the whole night, but sometimes Jack and Rose woke up to find he'd crawled into bed with them sometime in the early morning hours.

Now he stirred restlessly, frowning and restive in his sleep. This sharing of a bed was too new for Jack to know all his partners' sleeping habits, but he recognized the nightmare on the Doctor's face. It was the first time he'd seen it since he and Rose went looking for the Time Lord in his lair, and it was quieter, but it was still a nightmare. At least, Jack thought, he was in the middle of the bed, so the Doctor hadn't woken Rose. He still didn't trust the Doctor not to over-react if he accidentally hurt her before he realized where and when he was.

Jack looked down the length of that swimmer's body, naked in the dim light and a temperature that suited humans best. He could think of a few ways to wake the Doctor gently, without giving those hands and elbows a good angle for a startled blow. He found himself grinning at the thought. He sat up and pulled something off the bookshelves on the wall before scooting farther down the bed.

The look on the Doctor's face made Jack's grin fade. Watching someone you loved in distress always hurt. He rubbed his cheek softly along the Doctor's thigh. The Doctor stirred in response, but didn't wake. Jack nuzzled and licked without waking his lover. He didn't know if he could turn the dream, but he could drive it away with his body. He brushed his cheek along the Doctor's soft cock, then drew it into his mouth, suckling gently.

The Doctor was more than half-hard by the time his body tensed and his breathing changed. He made a small noise of protest, and his hand settled on Jack's hair, as if uncertain whether to pull him closer or push him away. He was trying to get his wits about him, but Jack wanted his wits where they were, muddled with waking and pleasure. He knew, in the thousand little ways you learn to read someone you love, that the Doctor still had days when he felt like he didn't deserve this. Sometimes, Jack thought "this" was him and Rose, and sometimes, he thought it was any kind of happiness, in general. He didn't argue, he and Rose just kept trying to prove otherwise.

Jack cupped the Doctor's balls in his hand and gently rolled them. The Doctor's fingers tightened in his hair, but it definitely kept him from doing anything else. Jack heard his name like a protest, decided it sounded half-hearted, and ignored it. By the time he slid his hand down the Doctor's thigh, pressing against the inside of his knee, the protest was gone. The Doctor parted his legs, letting Jack kneel between them.

Jack found the tube he'd retrieved from his shelves. He didn't want the Doctor thinking, only feeling. He slicked his fingers and brushed them against the entrance to his lover's body, knowing they were warm to the Time Lord, if nowhere near as warm as his mouth. Jack moved his lips up and down the Doctor's cock as he slid fingers gently into the other man's body, matching the rhythm of his mouth as he felt for the spot he wanted.

The Doctor's hips moved between his hand and his mouth, quiet gasps and muffled sounds feeding his own desire. He could draw this out, make it into a small eternity that had nothing to do with linear time, and have whatever he wanted of the Doctor. But what Jack most wanted was to shatter the remains of the nightmare, see the Doctor's brow smooth and his lips parted with pleasure, and see that relaxed sprawl he was capable of replace the tight muscles and twitching of the dream. He worked his lips and tongue and throat and fingertips until he had to swallow the Doctor's release, the foreign taste of the Time Lord still becoming familiar to him.

When the Doctor lay still, Jack stretched out along the length of his body, leaving one leg draped over the Time Lord's. He could just see the Doctor's eyes opened in the dim night-lighting. "Any better?" he whispered. The silence stretched out as the Doctor decided how he wanted to answer that. Jack didn't know what he expected, but figured he might get anything from a "yes" to a laughing denial of any such human frailties as vulnerability to Time Lord arrogance.

What the Doctor said was, "Some." He turned his head to Jack and pressed his lips to Jack's jawline.

Jack smiled a little. "What can I do to help?" he asked, seriously.

***

  
Rose heard the Doctor murmur, "Some." She wasn't quite half-awake, and lifted one eyelid just enough to make out that the Doctor had joined them at some point. He and Jack lay together a little space away from her, and the scent in the air gave her some reasonable idea what woke her up.

"What can I do to help?" Jack's voice was unwontedly sober. This wasn't just a cheerful romp, then.

The Doctor pulled him closer. "Remind me I'm alive," the Doctor said, softly. "Take me, put your body over mine. Remind me I'm alive, and that maybe, that's not a bad thing."

Rose's throat ached with the depth of feeling in those words. She'd borrowed her mum's computer, last time she was home, to read about what made people feel guilty about living. But it was one thing to read about it, and another to watch it every day in one of the men you love best. Jack stroked the Doctor's face, and Rose slit her other eye, but didn't move. Sometimes, when the three of them made love, it became about her. She wasn't going to risk this moment to that.

Jack drew his hand down the Doctor's body, and it ended between his legs. Rose watched the Doctor rock a little, his body relaxed instead of taut with desire as Jack's fingers moved inside him. Jack brushed kisses that were a bare touch of lips over his chest. There was something so unguarded in the way they held themselves, so different than either of them by the light of day: the Doctor hiding behind his jacket and Jack behind his swagger, each with his own armour.

 _Intimate_ was not a strong enough word. Jack laid his body over the Doctor's and the Doctor invited him in. Jack's eyes were locked on the Doctor's as he moved, and the Doctor's hands played up and down his back. She recognized the tenderness in their loving. She'd seen it from each of them, but never between them. Maybe it was a bloke thing, keeping your defences up when there was someone else to see. Even her.

It was afterward, after Jack cried out and collapsed, lying unmoving on the Doctor the way neither of them ever would with her, that the Doctor stretched one long arm out toward her. His head turned and she saw him looking at her.

She took his hand.


End file.
